Abstract. In the present paper, numerical and experimental investigations of a model
wind turbine with a diameter of 3.0 m are described. The study has
three objectives. The first one is the provision of validation data. The
second one is to estimate the influence of the wind tunnel walls by comparing
measurements to simulated results with and without wind tunnel walls. The
last objective is the comparison and evaluation of methods of high fidelity,
namely computational fluid dynamics, and medium fidelity, namely lifting-line
free vortex wake. The experiments were carried out in the large wind tunnel
of the TU Berlin where a blockage ratio of 40 % occurs. With the lifting-line free vortex wake code QBlade, the turbine was simulated under far
field conditions at the TU Berlin. Unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes
simulations of the wind turbine, including wind tunnel walls and under far
field conditions, were performed at the University of Stuttgart with the
computational fluid dynamics code FLOWer. Comparisons among the experiment, the lifting-line free vortex wake code and
the computational fluid dynamics code include on-blade velocity and angle of
attack. Comparisons of flow fields are drawn between the experiment and the
computational fluid dynamics code. Bending moments are compared among the
simulations. A good accordance was achieved for the on-blade velocity and the angle of
attack, whereas deviations occur for the flow fields and the bending moments.
Performance prediction of loop-type wind turbine